News

Dr. Micky Marinelli received 2 grants from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse.
She received an RO1 for her research project entitled “The lateral preoptic area: A novel regulator of VTA activity and cocaine seeking”. The research will investigate the potential role of the lateral preoptic area in drug seeking and...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) made 19 awards to cross-disciplinary teams across the country to conduct innovative research focused on neuronal and cognitive systems. These awards are supported through the NSF Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program that supports innovating, boundary crossing efforts to push the frontiers of brain...

Ellen Zippi, an undergraduate researcher in the Preston lab graduated with Dean's Honored Graduate recognition. Dean’s Honored Graduate is the highest honor awarded to graduating seniors in the College of Natural Sciences. It is restricted to fewer than one percent of the graduating class of the college during an academic year.
Ellen...

The Colgin Lab recently published a research article in the journal Hippocampus entitled "Impairments in spatial representations and rhythmic coordination of place cells in the 3xTg mouse model of Alzheimer's Disease".
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible and highly progressive neurodegenerative disease, and is the leading form of dementia. Clinically,...

Nearly a decade ago, when the U.S. was going through one of the worst recessions in decades, the Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) at the University of Texas at Austin was one of the few places hiring new neuroscience faculty. Most other universities canceled their recruitment efforts.
"It was...

Dr. Michael Drew received a R03 award through the NIH BRIAN Initiative for his research project entitled “Imaging adult-born neurons in action using head-mounted minimicroscopes”.
There is a vast amount of correlational and experimental data identifying adult neurogenesis—the generation of nerve cells in the adult hippocampus— as a clinically important form...

Dr. Eyal Seidemann and Dr. Boris Zemelman recently published a paper in eLife entitled “Calcium imaging with genetically encoded indicators in behaving primates.” This project describes a new technique for long-term (over a period of months) imaging of neural activity in the visual cortex of the behaving primate by measuring activity-dependent...

Dr. Nigel Atkinson receives NIH grant for his research project entitled “Epigenetic dissection of functional ethanol tolerance and dependence”.
This project seeks to identify a simple and effective way to pan for genomic changes that occur in the alcoholism phenotype. This will be accomplished by investigating genes that show common changes...

Neuroscience graduate students Anthony Lacagnina (Drew Lab), Lauren Kreeger (Golding Lab) and Matthew Davis (Zemelman Lab) won the 2016 Next Generation Award from the Society for Neuroscience for creating, producing and hosting "Brain Matters," a podcast about neuroscience and the scientists behind the bench.
Listen to all the Brain Matters...

Drs. Adron Harris and Dayne Mayfield received a competitive renewal from NIAAA for their long-standing project (since 1999) titled "Gene Expression in the human alcoholic brain." This research project investigates the theory that alcohol-induced changes in brain function are due to alterations in gene expression. Alcohol-induced changes in gene expression will be...

The Huk lab published an article in Nature entitled “Dissociated functional significance of decision-related activity in the primate dorsal stream”.
During decision making, neurons in multiple brain regions exhibit responses that are correlated with decisions, However, it remains uncertain whether or not various forms of decision-related activity are causally related to...

Dr. Nace Golding published an article in Nature Neuroscience entitled "Serotonin modulates spike probability in the axon initial segment through HCN".
In most neurons the Axon Initial Segment (AIS) represents the final stage of synaptic integration, where the complex interplay between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic signals and voltage-gated ion channels...

Dr. Max Snodderly and colleagues recently published an article in Vision Research entitled 'Eye movements between saccades: Measuring ocular drift and tremor". The paper describes guidelines to assess the precision and resolution of eyetracking systems and analyses and compares the intersaccadic eye movements of humans to those of a non-human primate.
Ko...

Laura Ferguson, a graduate student in Dr. Adron Harris’s lab, received a NRSA award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for her graduate project entitled “Molecular mechanisms underlying reduction of alcohol consumption by PPAR agonists”. This project investigates the mechanism of action of Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs),...

Dear alumni, parents and friends of UT neuroscience.
It was my honor to take over as chair of the Department of Neuroscience this January. Thanks to my predecessors Rick Aldrich, and more recently Dan Johnston, the department has grown to be one of the more respected neuroscience programs in the country....

The Huk lab recently published a research article in PNAS entitled 'Decision-related perturbations of decision-irrelevant eye movements". This research investigated the correlation of neural activity in oculomotor brain circuits with the formation of decisions about where to move the eyes, specifically asking if decision-related activity in oculomotor circuits interacts with eye movements...

Dr. Adron Harris was elected Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). The misson of the ACNP is to further research and education in neuropsychopharmacology and related fields, and to advance scientific understanding of and to facilitate communication about disorders of the brain and behavior in order to advance their...

Brain Matters, the Podcast, is entirely conceived and executed by a dedicated group of UT Neuroscience graduate students with a mission to make neuroscience accessible, relatable, and intriguing while still respecting the integrity of the science they love. During the show they discuss research that is being done today and reveal...

The Harris lab recently published an article in Nature Scientific Data entitled “A resource from 3D electron microscopy of hippocampal neuropil for user training and tool development”. The work reveals 3D reconstruction from serial section electron microscopy from volumes of CA1 of the rat hippocampus. These data set guidelines for...